When a fatal error occurs (esp. a segfault)
the immediate cause may be that a pointer has been trashed due to a
previous fandango on core. However, this fandango
may have been due to an earlier fandango, so no amount
of analysis will reveal (directly) how the damage occurred. “The
data structure was clobbered, but it was secondary damage.” By
extension, the corruption resulting from N cascaded
fandangoes on core is ‘Nth-level damage’.
There is at least one case on record in which 17 hours of
grovelling with adb
actually dug up the underlying bug behind an instance of seventh-level
damage! The hacker who accomplished this near-superhuman feat was
presented with an award by his fellows.